If you own an Android phone and use Office 2013, you no longer need to hover over your laptop or buy a Bluetooth remote to advance slides in PowerPoint. On Thursday, Microsoft released Office Remote for Android, a free app that lets you quickly access key Office 2013 features from the palm of your hand.

The most obvious use for Office Remote is the PowerPoint remote feature: Using it, you can control your presentation, view your slide notes, and “laser-point” at objects onscreen from the app, to name a few highlights.

Office Remote provides quick access to select Word and PowerPoint features as well. For example, you can switch between Excel worksheets with a swipe and use pivot tables from the app. You can also navigate around Word documents with just a tap.

Office Remote was formerly a Windows Phone 8-only app, but the jump to Android is in line with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s “mobile first, cloud first” strategy. For traditionalists, the idea of Microsoft embracing other platforms seems strange. But Nadella’s Microsoft goes where the users are, regardless of which platform they use, and goes from there.

This story, "Microsoft Office Remote comes to Android, lets you control presentations from your phone" was originally published by
PCWorld.